Weiner admits contact with girl, 17

New potential Twitter-related troubles arose for Rep. Anthony Weiner on Friday, after Delaware police reportedly spoke with a 17-year-old high school girl about “direct online communications” she’s had with the disgraced congressman.

Weiner confirmed the communications late in the day, but denied that anything inappropriate took place.

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The late-afternoon report by Fox News said New Castle County police officers showed up at the girl’s house at about 4:30 p.m., while a crew from the cable TV network was there.

The police “asked to speak with the girl’s mother about the daughter’s contact with Weiner,” Fox News reported, adding that one of the network’s reporters happened to be there when the cops showed up. The visit by the police was later confirmed by POLITICO.

The girl, whose name was withheld by Fox but who told the reporter she’s “doing OK,” left with her mother and the police, the network said, although it was unclear if there was a further conversation somewhere else.

A Weiner spokeswoman emailed a statement in response to the reports that confirmed his contact with the girl, but denied anything was amiss.

“According to Congressman Weiner, his communications with this person were neither explicit nor indecent,” said the statement.

On Saturday morning, the New York Post and the New York Daily News reported that the New Castle cops had not found anything wrong in Weiner’s exchanges with the teen-ager.

“They were made aware of an alleged contact between Congressman Anthony Weiner and an area teen,” said New Castle County police spokeswoman Officer Tracey Duffy, according to the Post. “The teen has been interviewed and disclosed no information regarding any criminal activity.”

Duffy said the probe was still ongoing. But her statement provided Weiner with a quick exoneration in the latest issue to develop since his tearful press conference last Monday admitting he’d tweeted a lurid photo of himself.

Depending on the nature of their exchanges, it could be the most substantively serious issue to surface about Weiner after a week in which he admitted to sending lewd photos to six women he engaged with on the Internet.

Weiner said on Monday that as far as he knew all the women were adults, and that they gave their ages that way.

However, there was no immediate information available that contradicted Weiner’s denial about anything inappropriate in his communications.

Fox reported that “sources close the student” said the Delaware girl was among his thousands of Twitter followers, signing up for his feed after watching him speak during a trip to the Capitol with her school on April 1.

He reportedly sent her a direct message over Twitter on April 13.

According to the New York Times, Weiner started following the girl two days after she signed up for his Twitter feed. He made a reference to her profile message that she hopes to be president someday, saying in a direct message, “How hip am I talking to a future president.”

The girl, the Times said, posted on her public Twitter account a message that has been taken note of by conservative bloggers in the past week, saying, “talking to Rep Weiner from New York right now! is my life real?”

That message prompted a warning shot over Twitter from a group of conservatives who had been zeroed in on Weiner’s Twitter feed, the Times said. The girl also started receiving some messages from them, and told Weiner she was being bothered, prompting him to apologize and stop following her on Twitter, the Times said.

But a month later, when Weiner did an online shout-out for more followers, the girl reminded him she used to follow him and on May 16 he started following her again. A relative of the girl told the Times that Weiner and the girl exchanged messages for almost two weeks after that.

In one, Weiner described himself as being like Superman, saying, “I came back strong. Large. Tights and cape. …”